It’s 2022 and I began writing again after taking a long hiatus since I quit my job 6 years ago and decided to go on a sabbatical at 28 years young. I promised myself I was going to document my journey, but of course, that did not happen (because I was too busy living life).
At the cusp of the new age of social media, I had turned to Instagram instead, neglecting my dearest diary that has been faithful to be for all these years (my blog at www.twentyfourcarat.net).
Life got busy. I got caught up in other things.
I forgot about my passion for writing a.k.a. the art of documenting things.
Did you know that your brain is actually pretty fucking terrible at remembering things? That’s why I take so many photos and notes. I love my life, and I want to cherish every single detail. It’s a great way to live.
I’ve been keeping a “diary” for since as long as I could remember because I have always loved writing and reading as a child, and my parents always tried to foster those habits. They would encourage us to write “essays” after our family vacations and my sister and I would happily (and extremely excitedly) oblige. We would “hand in” our essays to our parents along with pictures (stick people and coloring outside of the lines) and all. One of my favorite ‘games’ growing up was searching for words in the dictionary… I begged and begged my mom to make lists of words for me to look up. Nerd alert!
Story-telling and documenting has always been a part of growing up.
My grandpa was really into collecting and taking photos and documenting family histories, and I remember the rows and rows of photo albums at my grandparents house that I would look over and over growing up. I remember the feeling of looking at a black and white photo and imaging everything that was happening at that time, and wanting so bad to time travel.
My dad was a creative in his own quirky way, and always followed us around with a video camera. We have videos of us growing up at every stage in our life, and every moment was recorded on tape — serious and silly. We have videos of my younger sister and I dressed up in princess costumes (given to us by her best friend because we grew up with little money), presenting poems or stories we wrote, acting out skits, or presenting a “tv show” from a scroll we illustrated, winding it through a fake cardboard television with two slits on either sides for the paper to slide through. My mom use to let us record ourselves on a cassette tape before my sister and I before we went to bed, talking and telling silly stories. We were always so sad when she pressed stop, and made us actually go to bed.
I was one of the first kids with a cellphone in my elementary school (a chunky Fido) because I was already pretty nerdy and “techy” growing up — life changed when I got my first computer at 9-years-old. Soon after that, I got my first first film-processing camera. I followed my friends around with it everywhere in grade 7, and then I soon started doing that with my dad’s old video camera until we were about 15 or so.
I recently found the tape in my storage locker and we are going to have a showing (as soon as we find someone with a VCR we can borrow)! It’s going to be sooo embarrassing. I am already pretty mortified thinking of it so I hope there will be alcohol involved. I had a “photo” site/album titled “Captured” in high school that documented all our antics (publicly — why!!??!) but unfortunately, I simply suck at back ups and lost my years and years of photos that I had meticulously scanned onto my computer. Nobody misses those old scanners from the early 2000's.
On a bicycle ride earlier this year, I recall thinking to myself: I use to be so creative when I was younger because I was always drawing, creating, writing short stories, and poetry but I seem to have lost that spark… and I desperately wanted it back. I began writing again a few months ago.
It’s hard to find time these days but I decided to prioritize it because you always have to make room for things you love — whether it’s 20 minutes a day of a free flow of words or 4 hours on intensive keyboard tapping.
Writing induces flow state for me. I’m addicted to flow.
Writing keeps my mind sharp.
Writing satisfies my thirst for curiosity.
I never cared if anyone read my blog since I always wrote for myself. I just wanted to keep a record of my life, and take advantage of the therapeutic benefits of writing. I started this blog started at around 2005 when “personal blogs” were all the rage (remember those days?!), and then it’s heydays were when I started writing about [terrible] fashion, shopping, and all that girly stuff, and then I started writing about health and fitness (and lost thousands of readers). Hah. Unfortunately (or fortunately) most of those entries were lost due to an epic database fuck up but I learned to always look forward in life. I actually had multiple blogs prior to that but I can’t even imagine what my 10 year old self would write for the internet to see.
The only reason I started using Instagram in 2012 was to create a chronological order of my life in pictures. I wanted to get everything together in one place to create my “forever book” because documenting memories and telling stories has always been so important to me.
I was never a great writer, and I have so many unpublished articles due to perfection paralysis, or not being able to pick a perfect “featured image” for the blog.
In this fast-paced world with limited characters on Twitter and Instagram, I’m sure no one reads anymore anyway so I vow to overcome this terrible habit and begin documenting my experiences again, unedited photos + grammar + spelling mistakes and all.
Fuck perfection. Writing should be raw.
Writing is soul work.
🙏
